It was bought from German and Austrian owners in 1914 for £60,000; Hatry reorganised it in six months and sold a controlling interest for £250,000 (equivalent to £25,300,000 in 2023) to Gerard Lee Bevan and an associate called Peter Haig Thomas.
Hatry was not shy in displaying his wealth: his office suite had ornate bathrooms, he had swimming pools in his Mayfair homes, a yacht and a racing stable.
Number 56 was built on what was originally an independent plot some forty-one feet in frontage and thirty-three in depth, with a narrow passage at the back from Blackburne's Mews.
His improvements were of questionable but indisputably exuberant, taste, as a contemporary newspaper report recorded: "He installed – among other luxurious things – a swimming bath on the principal bedroom floor, and a stone-floored Tudor-style cocktail bar in the sub-basement."
"[citation needed] Hatry asserted that in late August 1929 he had made a secret visit to the Bank of England to appeal to Montagu Norman for financing to allow him to complete a merger with United Steel Companies, a UK firm.
On 19 September, after Hatry had approached Lloyds Bank in a last desperate bid for financing, he asked Sir Gilbert Garnsey, a chartered accountant, to intervene on his behalf.
Hatry had obtained a $1 million loan on forged bearer scrip certificates of City of Wakefield 4½% stock, and an alert clerk had spotted the discrepancy.
On that day, Hatry and his leading associates confessed to fraud and forgery in the office of Sir Archibald Bodkin, the Director of Public Prosecutions and, after lunching at the Charing Cross Hotel, were jailed.
In late December 1929, Hatry, along with Albert Edward Tabor, Edmund Daniels and Charles Graham Dixon, were tried at the Old Bailey, charged with forgery and fraud.
Hatry, his voice shaking with emotion, said in his defence: When I saw that matters were getting serious, I pledged every penny I possessed, my reputation, and maybe my liberty to avert what I knew would otherwise be a terrible crash.